


Either Way There Is a Light On

by Overnighter



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, Friendship/Love, Gen, Holidays, Pre-Split
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-27 00:27:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overnighter/pseuds/Overnighter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The trouble with love is that when you know you don’t need it it’s gone, and then it’s all you want."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Either Way There Is a Light On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miss_begonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_begonia/gifts).



> This is set before Ryan and Jon left, but the timing does not actually line up exactly. Sorry for any confusion.

It ended the way it had begun – quietly and tentatively. They would still be friends, still be in each other’s lives. They’d promised each other that much, and Keltie at least was someone who kept her promises. But too much time apart, too much time on the road, had left a gap too big to fill between them.

It was ridiculous, really, the way the house felt so empty. It wasn’t like she’d ever really lived here, just visited occasionally – and shouldn’t that have been a clue? – but with the tour over and the holidays about to begin, Ryan felt like he was rattling around in the house, the last pill in the bottle.

It was four days after Thanksgiving, two weeks after the tour ended, and he’d spent the last three of them alone. He’d spent the holiday itself with Spencer at his house, Haley’s family and the Smiths boisterous and welcoming and careful not to mention Keltie at all. He’d never felt more lonely.

Normally, he liked the first few weeks after a tour ended – he liked returning to his house and getting reacquainted with its nooks and crannies; liked doing normal things like laundry and grocery shopping and taking Hobo to the vet; liked being away from his bandmates just long enough to miss them and start coming up with excuses to get together and jam, to plan the next tour. This year, however, he’d spent the time mostly in bed, or slumped in front of the TV, until even he couldn’t stand himself anymore.

He’d woken up this morning determined to shake himself out of his lethargy. He’d gotten up early – well, before noon at least – and dressed carefully. He’d brewed coffee in the ancient percolator that was one of the few things he’d taken from his father’s house and sat at the kitchen table drinking the dark, slightly bitter brew while looking over the golf course and wishing he at least got a paper delivered to read. There were four months of Spin magazines and Harry & David catalogs piled up on the table in the entrance hall, but they weren’t the same. He’d sorted through his laundry and even thought about putting on a load, but after months and months of waiting until he’d run out of not only his own boxers, but Brendon’s and Jon’s too, the mound just didn’t look that intimidating.

Finally, he decided to get out of the house. He found Hobo’s leash in one of the nearly-empty hall closets and waited until she stopped jumping to shoulder height to put it on and go exploring his own neighborhood. He deliberately walked away from the direction of Spencer’s house, out towards the smaller homes set away from the golf course.

He knew that Spencer would have been happy to see him – Haley too – but they were still within the tour-ending bubble and also still ferrying about 20 members of Haley’s extended family all over the greater Las Vegas area. They were playing tour guides for aunts and cousins and parents who had never been west of Chicago before, who’d wanted to see cowboys and showgirls and everything in between. He figured they didn’t need one more house guest, even if he was the only one who would have been thoughtful enough to bring the quality weed he’d picked up from Shane’s dealer last week.

Instead, he wandered the cul de sacs of their gated community, waving to the few, mostly older residents he saw. They all seemed puzzled to see him, raising tentative hands in the air, but one of the old woman actually lit up when she saw him. He wondered for a moment just how much their demographics had skewed for the last album, but it turned out that it was Hobo she was really excited to see.

“Oh, are you the new dog walker?” she asked, bending down slowly to let Hobo lick her face. “I haven’t seen Greg around recently.”

Ryan swallowed hard, Hobo’s leash tightening in between his hands until he could feel the metal links embedded in his palm. One of the things he didn’t like about the end of the tour was being reminded – sometimes forcefully – that he was a spectator in large swathes of his own life, watching from the side as the world unwound around him.

“Actually,” he started, feeling slightly pathetic, and then stopped as Hobo tilted her head up at him and came to sit on the toe of his shoe. “You know what, I am. My name’s Ryan. Greg’ll be back in a few weeks.”

He held out his hand and let her take it carefully, smiling at him brightly.

“Are you heading out for a big date after this, dear? You look so nice!” she fussed, patting his tie with her dry, arthritic fingers. He glanced down at his suit and shrugged. This was pretty much the most social interaction he’d had in days, but she didn’t need to know that. Who knew, maybe Ryan Ross, Dog Walker, led a much more interesting life.

“I’m taking my girl out to the Strip tonight,” he confessed with a wink, trying not to stumble over the words. Keltie used to tell him that if he had his way, he’d live in a black and white movie. “Just a little early Christmas present.”

“That’s lovely, dear. It’s no time of the year to be alone,” she said, and it was on the tip of Ryan’s tongue to confess his deception, to ask her if she was here in her dream house on the edge of the desert all by herself, to invite her back to his house for tea, or maybe even a joint. Hell, Spencer’s grandmother was cool enough. She could be too. But even as he opened his mouth, the door behind her opened and an equally old man had leaned his head out the screen door.

“Elsie, lunch,” he called, and the old woman patted Ryan’s chest again before turning towards the house and making her way slowly up the walk.

“Tell Greg that Elsie and Morgan said hello,” she called, and Ryan nodded before allowing Hobo to pull him back towards home.

*

“Jesus Christ, Brendon! Are you a fucking ninja? How did you get here?”

Hobo totally failed as a guard dog. Not only had she not bothered to bark in warning that his living room had been invaded by a stray bandmate, she’d pulled away from him before he could even recover, running across the entry into the living room, still trailing her leash behind her.

“Hobo! Hardwood! Hardwood floors,” he called out, but it was too late. She’d already jumped up to where Brendon was sitting cross-legged on the couch, flopping over on her back across his knees as she wriggled with excitement.

“Hey, girl. Hey, girl, who’s a good girl?” Brendon crooned at her as he found the clasp for the leash and untangled it before going to work on her belly, scritching enthusiastically. Ryan glared at the two of them, but it took a minute for Brendon to look up at him.

“Oh, relax, Ross. The floors are fine. Also, I have a key. So does everyone you know. I think the mailman probably has one at this point. Also, also? The door was open.”

Ryan suddenly found the piles of mail on the table very interesting.

“Yeah, well, Imayhavemisplacedmykeyagainshutup,” he muttered. There was a flash in the corner of his eye as a keychain sailed across the length of the living room and landed several feet short of him.

“Was that supposed to be aimed at me?” he asked, eyeing it on the floor. It was not just a key, but a whole set, attached to a plastic key chain with a little bas relief stripper climbing a little rubber pole. “You don’t actually have to give them back to me. I do know you have a key. I just wasn’t expecting you.”

“Those aren’t my keys. They’re from Ginger. She bet me that you’d lose them within the first week. She’s got three more sets at home waiting for you. No one knows you like a mom, I guess.”

Ryan bent over and picked up the keys, pocketing them before he entered the living room, crossing to sit on one of the chairs opposite the couch. Hobo tilted her head back for a moment to watch him, then nosed at Brendon’s hands, which had stilled momentarily. He resumed the belly rub absent-mindedly.

“She responsible for the keychain, too?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Brendon looked up at him again and laughed, shaking his head.

“Actually, yes. She thought that you’d find it ironic.”

“Of course she did. Were you over there first? Are you doing a tour of everyone’s house today? Is Jon next on your list, because if you’re here for a ride to McCarran, you’re out of luck.”

Brendon snorted and gave Hobo one last pat before nudging her down off his lap and onto the floor. She immediately came over and nudged at his ankle, whining softly, then thumped down with a sigh on his shoes when he ignored her.

“Oh come on, you love me. And you secretly love driving your old-man car twenty miles an hour through long-term parking. You’d totally give me a ride if I asked you to. You are just that awesome. And yes, Mr. Observant, I did go to Ginger’s first. I had to pick up some stuff.”

He gestured behind the couch as he spoke. There were several battered cardboard boxes laid with haphazard care against each other, surrounded by a mound of bulging shopping bags. Ryan started. He was sure that he’d thrown all of those boxes away, or had someone take them away.

“Are you stalking me now, seriously? What the fuck? Get that shit out of here, Brendon. I mean it.”

Brendon looked at him for a long minute and then shook his head.

“No.”

“Brendon, it’s not even – why did Spencer even have that shit? I got rid of it all because I didn’t want it around.”

He remembered that first holiday, coming home from tour disoriented and at loose ends. He and Spencer and Brendon had all been in the cab together, coming from the airport, and when they’d rounded the corner to the street where Spencer and Ryan had grown up together, the house – now Ryan’s house alone – was the first thing they’d seen.

“Oh no. Crap. Crap, crap, crap.” Spencer had started babbling – actually babbling – from his seat beside the driver. “Shit, Ry, you know they don’t mean anything by it.”

It had been dusk, and the desert was already cooling off. Most of the houses were lit up by rows of gaudy Christmas lights – waving neon Santas and blow-up Frosty the Snowmen and wicker reindeer wound with tiny fairy lights. This was Vegas, after all, and even suburban neighborhood competed with the Strip to catch passing eyes.

The lights on the Ross house, however, had been far more modest, a double row of colored bulbs looped neatly around the roofline and the front door. For a moment, Ryan’s breath had caught, but they’d never been that neatly distributed before.

Christmas had always been the one holiday that George had managed to pull out of his ass. It was a remnant of Ryan’s childhood, from those first years after his mother left, when his father had tried to make up for everything at once with the biggest tree, the best lights, the most gifts. Even to the end, he’d always managed a sloppy row or two of lights, had remembered to pull out the dusty tree from closet under the stairs, had tried to get a gift or two he thought that Ryan might actually like. Clearly, someone – and from Spencer’s horrified reaction, it had had to be Mr. Smith – had tried to make the house look at least a little like Ryan would have remembered.

It was as if in that moment Ryan had first realized, really and truly, that his father was gone. That nothing would ever be the same. Until that point, in some corner of his mind, he’d always just imagined his father still in his armchair, propped in front of the television, or in the kitchen, at their scarred wooden table. Brendon had been there as Ryan had started to shake, as Spencer had practically clotheslined himself trying to climb over the partition into the backseat. Brendon had been the one who’d grabbed his hand, tilted his forehead against Ryan’s and whispered “Breathe” over and over.

Three days after that, Ryan had left to spend Christmas with Keltie’s family for the first time. By then, the lights had been tossed into a box and left out at curb, and there had been a small, discreet sign from the real-estate office on the front lawn. Ryan had never returned to the house. Mrs. Smith had arranged to have someone sort through the things she thought he might want, and he’d come back six months later to a new place, three blocks away from Spencer in an expensive, gated community.

A gated community that was totally useless at keeping out bandmates with no tact, apparently.

“Seriously, Brendon. Where did this come from? I don’t want it here. I’m not going to decorate. I’m not even going to be here.”

That was his plan. Spencer and his family were going to Illinois for Christmas, and while the Smiths, and Jon and even Pete had all offered to have him, he’d pretty much decided to pick whichever beach had the bluest water and plant himself there until the new year was over. He didn’t want to decorate the house. He didn’t want to think about Christmas at all.

Brendon glanced over at him at that, surprised.

“Spence and Jon said you weren’t coming,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m not. I’m taking a vacation.”

“We’re on vacation,” Brendon pointed out mildly. “That’s kind of the whole point. Besides, if you don’t want to travel to Chicago, where the hell else are you going to go?”

Brendon leaned forward on the couch, his bent knees tilted precariously under him. Ryan sighed, and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did.

“Anywhere, Brendon. I don’t know. I haven’t exactly figured it out yet.”

“You know you can come and spend the day with my family. My mom will totally get you a stocking and everything.”

Ryan grimaced, shaking his head. Just what he wanted, to spend an entire holiday with Brendon’s huge, crazy family, where he didn’t know anyone, any of the traditions or the in jokes or even the food. At least with Spencer and his family, he was on familiar territory.

“I don’t want to spend the day with your family. You don’t even want to spend the day with your family.”

“Hey,” Brendon protested, and Ryan opened his eyes to see Brendon looking at him with hurt eyes. “Things are better now.”

That was the truth. Things were better with Brendon and his family. He’d disappear as soon as they returned to Vegas for weeks at a time, lost to rounds of visiting brothers and sisters, and cheering on nephews’ soccer games and even spending time with his parents. Ryan was happy for him, really he was, but it was just one more reminder right now of all of the wrongs that he’d never get to right in his own life, his own fractured family.

“Your mom hates me,” he said flatly.

He didn’t think Brendon’s parents actually hated him, not anymore, not like in the beginning, when Mrs. Urie would stand at the front door and look over him and Spencer, in their tight t-shirts and girls’ jeans, with narrowed, suspicious eyes. But he suspected that only changed because she thought of him, when she thought of him at all, as that Poor Orphan Ross Boy. And that was even worse.

“She thinks you have a flair for fashion,” Brendon said, waving a hand as if that settled it. “She admires your way with accessories.”

“Your mother thinks that a denim jumper is a fashion statement.”

Brendon made a low noise in the back of his throat for a minute, as if trying to decide to get angry or not. After thinking it over for a minute, he shrugged.

“She’s raised five kids. She’s too tired to worry about fashion anymore. Anyway, if she really hated you, would she have helped me pick out all of this stuff?”

Brendon waved his hands again, back towards the pile of stuff behind the couch. On second glance, all of the bags surrounding the cardboard boxes were new, bulging with stuff.

“Jesus, Brendon. You took your mom shopping for decorations for my house? Are there little wooden angels in those bags? Like, hatboxes that say “A Country Christmas” and all that crap? I’ve seen your house, and I know Shane didn’t pick out that shit.”

Brendon laughed for a moment, a reflex, then drew his eyebrows together and attempted to sound serious.

“I – I, Brendon Urie – went shopping for you, Ryan Ross. On Black Friday. With every single female member of my family. My dad made fun of me! I got a blister! I got in a fight with an old lady over flamingo lights!”

He paused for breath, and Ryan glanced over to the bags instinctively. Brendon laughed again.

“She won. My point is – my point . . .” he trailed off and unfurled his legs, leaping up from the couch in one seamless movement that Ryan had never been able to copy, and coming over to stand in front of Ryan’s chair. Hobo stood up and pawed at his leg for a moment, but he ignored her, resting his hand against Ryan’s cheek for just a moment as he looked down.

“My point is that you used to love Christmas. You decorated the van, that first year. I just figured – this was really the first Christmas you’d be on your own. You know, your first real Christmas in Vegas since everything happened.”

Ryan tried to turn away, but the light pressure of Brendon’s hand kept him facing forward. He dropped his eyes instead, and Brendon let go, crouching beside him to scratch Hobo behind the ears, but he looked up again a moment later, catching Ryan’s eye as he took his hands.

“Come over and look. Just look. See what shiny, shiny stuff we got you. I told my sisters to think of you as a five-year-old girl with a black Amex. Everything has glitter. Or feathers. Sometimes the feathers have glitter on them. It’s pretty amazing.”

He tugged at Ryan’s hand until he stood up, smiling at him the way he always did, open and bright. His eyes were sad, but there was no trace of pity in them.

“C’mon, Ross,” he said, and then started to sing softly, “Step into Christmas . . .”

Ryan snorted and pulled his hand back, but he followed Brendon obediently over the mound of packages just the same.

“For the love of God, do not bring latter-day Elton John into this discussion. Please,” he said, but Brendon just smiled and kept singing under his breath.

*

Three hours later, Ryan had scrapped palms from catching Brendon as his slid sideways off a rain gutter, but his house was wrapped in a crooked layer of the biggest, tackiest colored bulbs that Ryan had ever seen. There was a giant wreath on the front door, covered in sparkly cardboard music notes. ("That is the ugliest thing I have ever seen." "I know! Isn’t it awesome? I picked it out just for you myself.") And every room in his house had some sort of decoration. Each one was worse than the last, and Brendon was right. The sparkly feathers were totally the best ones.

The only exception was the living room, where the world’s oldest, dustiest, ugliest plastic tree was hung with ornaments that Ryan had barely remembered until he’d started to unpack them, and then each one seemed to hold a memory in sharp relief. The year his father had taken him to the Grand Canyon. The year that his dad had been sober for six whole months after rehab, right through the holidays, almost until Valentine’s Day. The last year. They didn’t seem to hurt as much out in the open as he’d thought.

Brendon had turned on the tree lights a few moments ago and wandered off into the kitchen, flicking off the overhead lights as he went. There was a loose bulb somewhere, so only one strand blinked on and off, but it was still mesmerizing.

He startled a little when Brendon’s shadow appeared in the doorway, backlit by the kitchen light, then his eyes adjusted, and he could see his familiar grin as he leaned against the doorjamb, watching Ryan.

“Not the worst idea?” he asked, and Ryan could hear the real nervousness behind his question. He walked over to Ryan and handed him a beer, cold and still sweating condensation.

“No,” Ryan said softly, and reached out on impulse to draw him into a one-armed hug. Brendon looked surprised for a moment, and then his grin returned, even brighter. “No, it was a good idea. It’s – it sort of looks like I really live here, now.”

Brendon knocked into his shoulder and took a long pull of his beer.

“You do. Sorry, Ross. You’re just a kid from the wilds of Summerlin, Nevada like the rest of us. You’re just going to have to get used to it.”

He dropped to the floor suddenly, pulling Ryan with him.

“You know, if you can stand, like, a few hours of unholy squealing – and I think you can, I’ve seen you at our concerts, after all – while the kids open gifts on Christmas morning, I’m pretty sure that I can get a pass on the rest of the festivities. You, me, a really bad movie where things blow up, and then a buffet where we attempt to blow up our own stomachs? Come on, where are you gonna get a better offer than that?” he asked, as he started patting down his pockets absently.

Ryan thought for a moment. A sunny beach sounded like a great idea, but a sunny beach alone was still lonely. And now that his house looked like Santa’s elves had thrown up all over it, he sort of wanted to stick around and see what Brendon might come up with next.

“No smoking in the house,” he said automatically as Brendon crowed in triumph and pulled a crumpled pack of Parliaments from his vest pocket, but Brendon ignored him as he opened it and tapped out one very short, homemade joint.

“No, really?” Brendon teased. “’Cause I was totally gonna get you high and make you lay out under the tree and goof on the lights. And that, my friend, is one you can have for your own. I don’t think my mom would let me get away with making it a Urie family tradition.”

Ryan dug into his pocket and pulled out a lighter, handing it over without another word. Brendon smiled, and lit it, letting it burn for a minute before taking a hit and handing it over. They passed it back and forth in companionable silence for a few minutes before Ryan let Brendon tug him under the tree. They lay side by side, shoulders touching, as Brendon hummed a carol absently under his breath.

“Hey, do you mean it? You really don’t mind not being with your family on Christmas?” he asked, carefully staring straight up into the plastic branches as he watched the lights blink off and on. He felt Brendon nudge him with his shoulder, and he glanced over. Brendon’s smile was soft and slightly unfocused.

“I’d still be with my family,” he answered easily. Ryan shook his head.

“No, I mean, but you’d miss, like, family dinner and all. Aren’t you going to miss it?”

“Eh, there’ll be other dinners. Besides, you emotional Neanderthal, I meant that you were my family, too. Seriously, Ross, how are you the metaphor guy?” he asked. He passed the nub of the joint back to Ryan, making a cross-eyed face.

“Oh. Oh, I didn’t . . .” he trailed off, feeling stupid.

“Oh, Ryan. So pretty. So dumb,” he said, and giggled as he tangled his hand in Ryan’s in the narrow space between them.

Ryan flushed, and squeezed his hand tight for just a moment. “Thanks,” he whispered, and felt an answering pressure as he turned his face back to the lights above him.

“Okay, let’s enjoy the hell out of these bad boys, because I’m starting to get hungry, and my mom totally sent you leftovers,” Brendon said after a minute.

Ryan groaned, but he looked over to Brendon and smiled.

“Gross. Does that mean that there’s Jell-o salad somewhere in my refrigerator right now? You know how I feel about green Jell-o.”

“Relax, you giant baby. I snagged the ambrosia for you. You know you love it.”

“Is that the one with the little marshmallows?”

Brendon rolled his eyes and stubbed the joint out carefully against the metal foot of the tree stand.

“They all have little marshmallows in them. Have you paid attention to anything I’ve taught you over the years? I think I’m offended.”

Ryan laughed – a real, honest snort of amusement – and rolled his own eyes in return. He started to get up off the floor, but Brendon just tugged at his hand until Ryan settled against him once more.

“In a minute,” he said softly. “Just give it one more minute.”


End file.
